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METRO VANCOUVER -- Mandarin Chinese is a favourite choice when it comes to learning a new language, despite a lack of resources for educators and recent controversies in the community, local schools say.

At UBC’s Continuing Studies program, which offers non-credit courses for adult students, Mandarin ranks second among the school’s most popular foreign language courses, behind only French and ahead of Spanish.

Program leader Nina Parr said UBC has about 200 adult students registered in its Mandarin classes at any time, and usually about two-thirds are beginners. The overwhelming reason students are taking up the language appears to be career advancement.

“It’s not necessarily that they have jobs where they need to speak Mandarin,” Parr said. “It’s more that people in their 20s and even early 30s feel like the language is an added benefit for them. To be able to say to an employer: ‘These are all the skills I have, and I have a basic communication level in Mandarin.’ It’s just an extra bonus to have that skill, especially in Vancouver.”

Much of the interest for younger students at the undergraduate level is about studying a foreign language and culture, said Ross King, head of UBC’s Department of Asian Studies.

“You would expect a lot of students to take an Asian language for career- and business-related reasons,” said King, who noted that UBC has about 400 undergrads taking Mandarin classes. “Instead, the reasons are often idiosyncratic, cultural and personal — because of somebody they know, or because of pop culture, martial arts, a boyfriend or girlfriend, Chinese cinema, whatever.”

Interest in Mandarin is equally high at Langara College, where the dean of Continuing Studies, Daniel Thorpe, said there are 400 students enrolled in the school’s Mandarin Centre, a program offering classes to both children and adults.

Thorpe said that while the school initially focused on children’s programs, the percentage of adult learners has steadily climbed in the past decade, reaching about 33 per cent of the total student count as of this year. He said about 10 per cent of the students are not from the Chinese-Canadian community.

“The bulk of (students) has always been first- and second-generation (Chinese-Canadian) parents wanting their kids to know the language,” Thorpe said. “But in the last couple of years, there’s certainly an increase in non-Chinese students showing up as well, just because parents think it would be good for them to learn some Mandarin.”

There has been controversy about the language in recent years. Chinese-only store signs have been hotly debated in Richmond, and a group of English-speaking condo owners recently filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over a decision by other owners who insist on conducting strata meetings only in Mandarin.

But such issues are unlikely to dampen the language’s popularity for students, said David Spaulding, who founded the Crocodile Mandarin School specifically targeting non-Chinese speakers in 2008.

“I think it’s inevitable, really. It’s going to grow,” said Spaulding, whose school has steadily expanded to five locations and 300-plus students. “When I started this school, I thought there would be some kind of historic event that would make everyone suddenly aware of the importance of Mandarin. … But it’s okay if it grows gradually.”

UBC’s King said rising public interest in learning languages like Mandarin is connected to Canada’s growing trade and cultural ties with China. But a lack of resources has limited the “Asia competency” of Canadians compared to other western countries.

“Certainly, no one is saying everyone should learn Chinese,” King said. “But friendly competitors like Australia, New Zealand, and every single U.S. state along the west coast have been doing more for many years. There are no meaningful top-down incentives in B.C. for students to tackle Chinese or other Asian languages.

“If the B.C. and Canadian governments invested more in Asian language education … the number of students would probably double overnight.”

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